ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST NEW YORK

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Featured Works in the Online Collection

What's "allover painting"? How did Mark Rothko mix and apply paint to achieve his signature style? Take a closer look at renowned Abstract Expressionist paintings and find out answers to these questions and more.

EXHIBITION PUBLICATION

Abstract Expressionism at The Museum of Modern Art is both a catalogue of highlights from MoMA’s renowned collection and a portrait of a pivotal era in the history of modern art. With 147 illustrations.

Visitor Package

Enjoy this sweeping exhibition more fully when you purchase the AbExNY Visitor Package. This convenient, discounted package includes gallery admission, the exhibition’s illustrated catalogue, and a voucher for MoMA’s cafés. Ask for it at the Information or Ticketing desks in MoMA’s lobby.

Online Courses

Experience postwar abstract painting—from an artist’s point of view. This new online course leads students in a hands-on examination of the materials and techniques used to create some of the twentieth century’s greatest masterpieces.

Shop Ab Ex

215 West 57th StreetArt Students League of New York

Many of the Abstract Expressionists studied at this venerable art school, including Barnett Newman, who took his first drawing classes and met Adolph Gottlieb there; and Jackson Pollock, who was mentored by the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Hans Hofmann taught there in 1932, after immigrating to the U.S. from Germany, before starting his own school the following year.

106 West 53 Street

30 West 57th StreetArt of This Century Gallery, 1942–47

Peggy Guggenheim held solo shows by Hans Hofmann, William Baziotes, and Mark Rothko at her gallery Art of This Century. In 1943, she gave Jackson Pollock his first one-man exhibition—MoMA acquired its first Pollock work, The She-Wolf, from this show.

15 East 57th Street

Samuel Kootz Gallery, 1944–48
Showed the work of William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, and Adolph Gottlieb

The Betty Parsons Gallery, 1946–63
Parsons opened her own gallery in 1946 and exhibited work by Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Jackson Pollock. In 1948 Parsons mounted the first exhibition of Pollock’s work to feature paintings made in the “drip” technique, including MoMA’s Full Fathom Five (1947).

Sidney Janis Gallery, 1948–98
The Sidney Janis Gallery was among those responsible for bringing great commercial success to the Abstract Expressionist artists. On May 5, 1959, Time magazine reported that by 8:15 a.m. a long line had formed outside the gallery of people trying to get into the opening of a de Kooning exhibition. By noon that day, 22 works had sold.

11 West 53 StreetThe Museum of Modern Art

MoMA and Abstract Expressionism have a long history together. In the 1940s, MoMA began acquiring individual works by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Arshile Gorky, at first showing them in survey exhibitions alongside figurative paintings, geometric abstractions, and other types of work. In the 1950s, the Museum organized exhibitions that focused on these artists (now known as Abstract Expressionists), for example The New American Painting (1958), which caused a sensation on its tour of eight European cities. In the 1960s, MoMA recognized Abstract Expressionists such as Gorky, Motherwell, Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Mark Rothko with one-person retrospectives. And in 1969 MoMA took a look back at the movement’s history with The New American Painting and Sculpture: The First Generation, an exhibition of about 150 Abstract Expressionist paintings and sculptures from the collection. The 2010 exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York is MoMA’s first large-scale survey of the movement, and of the Museum’s Abstract Expressionist collection, presented since then.

375 Park AvenueSeagram Building

In 1958 Mark Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Philip Johnson–designed Four Seasons restaurant, located in Mies van der Rohe’s newly built Seagram Building. Rothko ultimately abandoned the project, deciding that his somber paintings were unsuited to the boisterous atmosphere of a restaurant.

473 Sixth AvenueFranz Kline’s studio, 1944–57

52 West 8th StreetHans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, 1938–58

The artist Hans Hofmann was also an influential teacher and theorist. His students included Louise Nevelson, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell. Hofmann set up his first school in 1915, in Munich. In 1932 he settled in New York, teaching at the Art Students League and a year later starting his own school. The school relocated a couple of times before settling at 52 West 8th Street in 1938.

Southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 8th StreetWaldorf Cafeteria

“During World War II, the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue off Eighth Street became the favorite hangout for downtown painters and sculptors. However, they were not comfortable there; when the weather permitted, they assembled in nearby Washington Square Park. The cafeteria was a gloomy and cruddy place, full of Greenwich Village bums, delinquents, and cops. The management did not want the artists; they just drank coffee, and were often too poor to buy even a cup. What was worse, since hot water was free, some artists would bring their own tea bags, or use the ketchup on the tables to concoct tomato soup. To harass them, the Waldorf managers allowed only four persons to sit at a table, forbade smoking and, for a time, even locked the toilet. In reaction, the artists began to frequent the Cedar and to think about forming their own club.”

39 East 8th StreetThe Club, 1949–62

The Club was a rented space where the Abstract Expressionist artists met to talk about art. In addition to engaging in casual conversation, the artists used the location as a venue for organized lectures, film screenings, and symposia.

24 University PlaceCedar Street Tavern

The Abstract Expressionist artists frequented the Cedar Street Tavern, often called the Cedar Bar, from the late 1940s until it closed in 1963. The site of legendary brawls as well as nurturer to many friendships and romances, the Cedar was often the destination for celebrating successful gallery openings.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, de Kooning and Tworkov had adjoining studios in a second-floor former storefront here. De Kooning first rented the floor in 1946. Around 1947, with the help of his cousin Conrad Fried, de Kooning divided the floor and Tworkov set up his studio in the space at the back. There was no hot water and only a shared bathroom in the hall. The two artists split the $35 monthly rent.

More than sixty years have passed since the critic Robert Coates, writing in the New Yorker in 1946, first used the term “Abstract Expressionism” to describe the richly colored canvases of Hans Hofmann. Over the years the name has come to designate the paintings and sculptures of artists as different as Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner and David Smith.

Beginning in the 1940s, under the aegis of founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., works by these artists began to enter MoMA’s collection. Thanks to the sustained support of the curators, the trustees, and the artists themselves, these ambitious acquisitions continued throughout the second half of the last century and produced a collection of Abstract Expressionist art of unrivaled breadth and depth.

Drawn entirely from the Museum’s vast holdings, Abstract Expressionist New York underscores the achievements of a generation that catapulted New York City to the center of the international art world during the 1950s, and left as its legacy some of the twentieth century’s greatest masterpieces.

Galleries on the fourth floor present Abstract Expressionist paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and archival materials in a display subtitled The Big Picture, marking the first time in the new Museum building’s history that a full floor has been devoted to a single theme. The exhibition continues on the floors below, where focused shows—Rock Paper Scissors on the second floor, and Ideas Not Theories on the third floor—reveal distinct facets of the movement as it developed in diverse mediums, adding to a historical overview of the era and giving a sense of its great depth and complexity. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated publication.

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